BHL's defence of DSK is clearly crass and ridiculous, to my mind...but I think Schumpeter spoils what is actually an extremely important point to make (that certain sections of the French 'intelligentsia' are revealing themselves to be remarkably sexist) by dealing out insults left, right and centre. Dismissing, out of hand, Foucault as a 'colossal bore' and Lacan as a producer of 'incomprehensible bilge' doesn't really advance the argument any further.

In my earlier adress to gossypols question I wrongly connected the statement “If the cleaning woman has been attacked,..., then we are touching on the sublime, in the Kantian sense..." with Henri-Lévy instead of de Miranda.
My apologies to HL

Rather than getting all existential, maybe this is just a question of some dirty old man who can't keep his fly zipped, and too well connected to worry about consequences from lesser beings. Apparently a not unknown state for this particular "gentleman".
What is perhaps quite Gallic is how long this "gentleman" has been getting away with this behaviour. Certainly long enough that even in the biased French press he is known as "Le Perv". For shame.

Why wonder?This is the era in which on the west of the English/French Channel the concept of the market has been raised to the status of deity which ought to rule and would provide for everything while the pronouncements of one particular school of economics had been praised as prophecies. Why would not anything opaque enough - even (or especially) non-sense - not pretend to make sense this side of the Channel?

I would have added Jacques Derrida to your list. I agree and that is why I am spending a fortune on an American education for my children, rather than relying on the free education they are entitled to through their French passports. You could also have mentioned that France came out 46 out of 154 countries in the World Economic Forum gender gap index. Shame on the French media and political establishment for covering up for a rapist for so many years

Interesting. To the French, intentional stupidity that is career-ending is now an affirmative, heroic act of seppuku. It is almost as if a samurai, incoherent with lust, accidentally falls on his own sword as he drags his victim towards the bedchamber.

DSK's shogun must be so proud of his heroic retainer's brave adherence to political bushido.

Sir
I do not understand why you need to be so agressive!
And if you do not understand Michel Foucault nor Louis Althusser or Lacan , you should perhaps raise questions about yourself!
When so many British people come to France, we do not try to mock them!
And as a Jew i must say i remember the terribly cynical attitude England had in Palestine during the war.
So please loook at yourself and your country with modesty, you are not so bright!

The Sublime is a category of aestethics that signifies a trancendental quality of greatness beyond all human capabilities of control that at most can be perceived (event character), but not understood.
Kant (Kritik der Urteilskraft, 1790) sharpens the meaning of this concept with regard to the subject of judgement by setting it into contrast to beauty which requires an object - something finite with boundaries and Properties(i) - something that can be understood. Whereas the Sublime requires formlessness and lack of boundaries which excludes the Attributes(ii).
To my understanding that means it must be therefore Relation(iii). Actually the set of Relations that is - in the mental construct - the Substratum of the material and the mental with the quality of reason (in contrast to understanding). The quality of reason allows the human mind in Kants view to perceive the Sublime in events, but excludes understanding by definition because of its infiniteness. Again to my understanding, this definition of the Sublime is a claim for the existence of Absolute Truth as the implicit order - or its definition; a theology without a god. My -be warned- understanding is therefore in opposition to the critics from semiotic theory, which disregards the historical (religous) context of Kant.

“If the cleaning woman has been attacked, the woman worker had violence done to her, then we are touching on the sublime, in the Kantian sense...”

Obviously Henri-Lévy introduces -conditionally- the "attack" as the event that allows us to to perceive/refers us to the Sublime, that can not be understood. This is of course nonsense. Everyone can understand out of what kind of mental states and situations such transgressions can and do happen. The reference to Kant is simply obfuscating and a self-elevation of HL. It is like playing Beethoven as the background music in a supermarket.

The so-called French Intellectuals don't even recognize that, if it really was a setup, than we outdid them by a country mile. They seem to think that it was just too perfect not to be setup. Well, I say it was too perfect to be a setup. Just think about it. We have a hero; he has his hamartia; that leads him to make an inevitable mistake; that causes the requisite peripeteia; then we have our (and his own) anagnorisis. Now we await the denouement. This is just too perfect of a setup. I expected a little more pattern recognition from the descendants of Racine and Molière. After all, aren't the French the great appreciators and practitioners of anything/everything theatrical?

In this context, I'm reminded of Albert Camus' "juge-penitent" (in La Chute, I believe). I suspect that the "penitent-judge" was a Camus sendup of the kind of contorted flim-flam that has surfaced again in the present case. Camus had Sartre and de Beauvoir; we have Levy-Straus. Still, Strauss-Kahn might well be glad of a judge who will be penitent from pre-trial hearings through trial to sentencing. And he ain't likely to get one in New York City.

I kind of agree and I'm French, I'm really outraged by the reaction of the French press and "intellectuals" but I think it's lazyness, nobody can really explained why DSK did what he did except himself, the guy was supposed to be the next French president after all, now he's probably going to finish his life as a convicted sexual predator. Instead of trying to understand his puzzling behavior, the French rather blame the American justice system and even the behavior of the maid, it's just easier. There were a few clear warning signs however, the affair he had at the IMF and the assault on Tristane Banon. I find the treatment of Tristane Banon upsetting also, most forget that going through the justice process is extremely difficult and traumatizing for a rape victim. most rape victims rather stay silent.